PROBEN ZU PETER WEISS/THE TROTSKY REHEARSALS
Achim Lengerer
17 - 30 October 2016

 

Provisional film set and reading rehearsals as part of the exhibition "Straub/Huillet/Weiss. Alienation Towards Our Small Familiar World"

Achim Lengerer's "Proben zu Peter Weiss/The Trotsky Rehearsals" project is based on many years of research on the aesthetics of political speaking in conjunction with the 1970 play "Trotsky in Exile" by Peter Weiss (1916-1982). It tells the life of the Marxist theorist and founder of the Red Army Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) in the form of flashbacks in which he recalls his relationship, quarrels and power struggles with his early collaborator and later political adversary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. This rarely performed and now nearly forgotten play already set off to political controversies in both East and West Germany before and during rehearsals ahead of the premiere in January 1970. From 17 to 30 October, Lengerer will install a provisional film studio at the Temporary gallery and he will meet with contemporary eyewitnesses. Further, public readings will take place referencing the study and reading groups that were formed in student circles during the early 1960s as well as the left-wing reading groups from the early 1980s that focused on Weiss's "The Aesthetics of Resistance". The events follow the installation in the exhibition, which both includes written and sound recordings from various archives and depicts the controversial reception of the play.

Achim Lengerer (born 1973) works with questions of language that he either thematizes in performances or spatialises within installations. Since 2009, he runs the instant publishing magazine and travelling showroom Scriptings.

Images
Achim Lengerer: Proben zu Peter Weiss/The Trotsky Rehearsals, Gasworks London, 2013